Saturday, December 20, 2008

Thanks for checking out the blog. In it you’ll find news and info about what’s going on in our world.

We’ve had a great year filled with friends, family, work and play. Summer 2008 marked our third summer down in South Texas and even though we miss our friends and family in The Great State of East Texas, we are humbled and blessed by the amazing people who God keeps bringing into our lives in Corpus Christi.

Since we’re talking about people in our lives, this is a good opportunity to tell you about our involvement with our church, Bay Area Fellowship, in Corpus Christi. We’ve been able to join a terrific home team that meets out here on the lake. We’re both involved in leadership; Kristie is in charge of communications and Shaune teaches and acts as the director for the group. Also, Shaune is involved in the worship ministry and has had the opportunity to lead worship on the main stage. Overall, the church is different than any we’ve been a part of before, but we see so many people whose lives are being changed by the work that’s going on at Bay Area, so we have chosen to make this our church home and serve whenever and however we can.Camp ministry still takes up most of our time, and the opportunities that come with it are always challenging and fun. This year we had a wonderful group of summer staffers made up of around 30 college and high school students from around South Texas, and the summer is filled with ministering to them as they serve the thousands of kids who come through here each year. Between our youth camps, kids camps, and family camp, we put on 7 camps for Zephyr and had around 3000 kids come through those camps. In case you are wondering, yes, Kristie does get wrangled into helping with these camps even though she doesn’t exactly work for the camp. In addition to her role in the summer camp arena, she also has the opportunity to facilitate a women’s Bible study for the women who are on camp year round. In fact, Kristie had the really cool opportunity to speak in front about 2000 girls at Pineywoods Powerplus Camps this summer. She led their Girl's Night program and did a fantastic job speaking to teenage girls about their self image as it relates to God's plan for their lives.

Rounding out the year, we’ve had some random adventures. We have another niece to spoil since Kristie’s brother and sister-in-law had another baby girl Kenzi. Recently, we went to Hot Springs Arkansas, where Shaune officiated a wedding for two students who worked for him at UT Tyler. Also, Shaune has restarted the master’s of Human Resource Development program at UT Tyler and plans to finish his degree in December 2009.

That’s it for this year, I know this is scattered info, but we wanted to let you know the high points. You can check back later for more updates or stories.